This paper deals with the local accent of Standard English spoken in Lerwick, the main town or capital in the Shetland Islands, in contrast to previous research on Shetland speech which focused on the local Scots dialect, commonly referred to as 'Shetland dialect'. The account is based on data collected for a phonological study, in which a judgment sample of bidialectal, middle-aged, middle-class speakers was obtained through a network model. It is also informed by data collected in an earlier regional survey, as well as observations made over a ten year period. An analysis is presented of systemic, distributional and realizational aspects of the vowel and consonant systems. It may be concluded that the accent displays a number of localized features, especially regarding phonetic realization, but also standardized features, including various consonant contrasts and the lexical distribution of phonemes. An overview is also provided of grammatical and lexical features, which further supports the suggestion that the speech accounted for constitutes a form of (Scottish) Standard English.

Previous research on Shetland speech has not explicitly dealt with speech forms leaning towards Scottish Standard English (SSE) but has focused on Shetland dialect, the local Scots dialect. This paper argues that a local accent of SSE can be identified in Shetland, especially for speakers in Lerwick, the largest town in Shetland. The accent has not been previously fully described, and this paper presents an analysis of systemic, distributional and realizational aspects of the vowel and consonant systems, based on data from a recent survey (Sundkvist 2004). It is suggested that the Lerwick accent displays a phonemic inventory and lexical distribution similar to that commonly reported for mainland accents of SSE, with the exception of a somewhat larger inventory of vowel phonemes. At the level of phonetic realization, the Lerwick accent shares several features with mainland varieties of SSE, but displays a number of localized features in addition.